ITIL Interview Questions and Answers

These ITIL Interview Questions have been designed specially to get you acquainted with the nature of questions you may encounter during your interview for the subject of ITIL.

As per my experience good interviewers hardly plan to ask any particular question during your interview, normally questions start with some basic concept of the subject and later they continue based on further discussion and what you answer.we are going to cover top 100 ITIL Interview questions along with their detailed answers.

We will be covering ITIL scenario based interview questions, ITIL interview questions for freshers as well as ITIL interview questions and answers for experienced. 

1. What is ‘change request’ in ITIL?

Ans:

A change request is a formal proposal for an alteration to some product or system.

2. What is a ‘service request’?

Ans:

A service request is a user request for information or advice, or for a standard change or for access to an IT service.

3. Explain Core Services in detail

Ans:

Core services give the basic results needed by the customer. These services signify the value that a customer requires.

4. Who decides the categorization of a proposed change within an ITIL compliant Change Management process?

Ans:

This is the task of the Change Manager. A Change Manager will plays a key role in ensuring that the projects (change initiatives) meet their objectives within timelines and said budgets by increasing employee adoption and usage.

5. What is SLA?

Ans:

A service level agreement (SLA) is a contract between a service provider (either internal or external) and the end user that defines the level of service expected from the service provider.

6. What Are the Direct Benefits of ITIL?

Ans:

The benefits of ITIL implementation are:

1. 1. Builds a stronger alignment between IT and the business.
2. 2. Improved customer satisfaction and a higher quality of delivery of services.
3. 3. Reduced costs by implementing improved utilization of resources.
4. 4. Greater visibility of the business’ IT costs and assets.
5. 5. Better management of business risk and service disruption.
6. 6. Providing a more stable service environment, better equipped to support constant business change.

7. What two Service Management processes will most likely use risk analysis and management methodology?

Ans:

The two service management processes are,

1. 1. Availability Management
2. 2. IT Service Continuity Management

8. What is an OLA?

Ans:

An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines the interdependent relationships in support of a service-level agreement (SLA).

9. What are the different Knowledge Management Systems (KMS)?

Ans:

They are – CMIS (Capacity Management Information System), AMIS (Availability Management Information System), KEDB (Known Error Database), CMDB (Configuration Management Database), DML (Definitive Media Library), and SKMS (Service Knowledge Management System).

10. What is the relation between Availability, Availability service time and downtime?

Ans:

Availability % = (Available service time –downtime) / Available service time

11. What is Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDSA) cycle?

Ans:

The PDSA Cycle is a systematic series of steps for gaining valuable learning and knowledge for the continual improvement of a product or process.

Also known as the Deming Wheel, or Deming Cycle, the concept and application was first introduced to Dr. Deming by his mentor, Walter Shewhart of the famous Bell Laboratories in New York.

12. Define the four phases in the PDSA cycle?

Ans:

1. 1. Plan: Identifying and analyzing the problem.
2. 2. Do: Developing and testing a potential solution.
3. 3. Check: Measuring how effective the test solution was, and analyzing whether it could be improved in any way.
4. 4. Act: Implementing the improved solution fully.

13. What are the 7 R’s of change management?

Ans:

Deals with those services which are added to core service to make more appealing to the clients. This service encourages customers to use core services frequently.

14. What type of information is stored in a CMDB?

Ans:

CMDB contains contents that are intended to hold a collection of IT assets commonly referred to as configuration items (CI) as well as descriptive relationships between such assets.

15. What is the difference between end-users and customers?

Ans:

An end user or end customer directly receives the service or employs the product.

A customer may or may not have the ability to choose between different products and suppliers.

16. What is difference between Expedite / Urgent Change and Emergency Change?

Ans:

An ITIL emergency change is the highest priority change that can be defined in an organization.

An expedited change is a change that meets a critical business requirement without the normal review and approval time.

17. What’s the Difference Between a Change Request and a Service Request?

Ans:

A change request is a formal proposal to alter a particular product or system, while a service request is formally submitted by a user, and is a request for IT service access, the changing of a standard, or information or advice.

Service requests include things like access to the cloud or requiring a new laptop or printer.

As a rule, service requests deal with things that have already been approved of by company policy and don’t require any extra permission.

18. What is a PIR?

Ans:

Post Implementation Review (PIR) is that which takes place after a change or a project has been implemented.

19. Explain service portfolio, service catalogue and service pipeline.

Ans:

Service portfolio refers to the services provided by service provider across all Market and all customers.

20. What is freeze period?

Ans:

Freeze period is a point in time in the development process after which the rules for making changes to the source code or related resources become stricter, or the period during which those rules are applied.

21. What is the ITIL Lifecycle Model for services?

Ans:

The ITIL Lifecycle Model for services includes:

• Human Error
• Inadequate security control for shared drives
• Malware
• Misuse
• Outdated data security
• Physical theft of data

22. Name the ITIL Models commonly adopted by the organizations.

Ans:

There are  types of ITIL models adopted by the organizations –

1. 1. Manual workaround
2. 2. Reciprocal arrangements

23. What is ISO/IEC 27002?

Ans:

ISO/IEC 27002:2013 is an information security standard devised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

This code of practice provides guidelines for organizational information security standards and information security management practices.

24. Give some examples of web-based service desk tools.

Ans:

Some example of web-based service desk tools include 

1. 1. Customer service level agreement:  Exists between the service provider and an external customer.
2. 2. Internal service level agreement: An agreement between IT and an internal customer (such as another site or department).
3. 3. Vendor service level agreement: An agreement between you and the vendor.

25. What is the number of child tables that can be created out from a single parent table?

Ans:

The number of child tables that can be created out of the single parent table is equal to the number of fields/columns in the parent table that are non-keys.

26. Employee health details are hidden from his employer by the health care provider. Which level of data hiding is this? Conceptual, physical or external?

Ans:

This is the scenario of an external level of data hiding.

27. What is the form of fact table ?

Ans:

Generally, the fact table is in normalized form and the dimension table is in de-normalized form.

28. What particulars you would need to come up with a conceptual model in a health care domain project?

Ans:

For a health care project, below details would suffice the requirement to design a basic conceptual model

29. What are ITSCM and BCP?

Ans:

ITSCM – IT Service Continuity Management is a practice that allows the information security professionals to develop IT infrastructure recovery plans

BCP – Business Continuity Planning is the process by which a company creates a prevention and recovery system from potential threats.

30. What is ICT?

Ans:

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is the infrastructure and components that enable modern computing and refers to technologies that provide access to information via telecommunications.

31. How are ICT and BCP related?

Ans:

BCP is a systematic process to predict, prevent, and manage ICT, and includes –

1. 1. IT disaster recovery planning
2. 2. Wider IT resilience planning

Elements of IT infrastructure, and services related to (voice) telephonic and data communications

32. What is CSF?

Ans:

Critical Success Factor or CSF refers to an element mandatory for the successful achievement of a task. It drives any company forward and meet the business goals through its strategy.

33. What is data leakage?

Ans:

It refers to an unauthorized data transmission, either electronically or physically, from an organization to any external destination or recipient. The most common forms of data leakage are through web, email, and mobile data storage devices.

34. Which factors contribute to data leakage?

Ans:

The most common factors leading to data leakage include –

• Corrupt hard-drive
• Human Error
• Inadequate security control for shared drives
• Malware
• Misuse
• Outdated data security
• Physical theft of data

35. How to prevent data leakage?

Ans:

1. 1. Data leakage is a serious issue and thus there is a need to devise a proper strategy to tackle.
2. 2. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a practice adopted by the organizations to safeguard their data.
3. 3. Under this practice, users are not allowed to send confidential or sensitive information outside of the enterprise network.
4. 4. This requires businesses to distinguish the rules that classify confidential and sensitive information such that any user does not disclose it maliciously or even accidentally.

36. What is XSS attack?

Ans:

Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is another type of vulnerability that can be technically described as a client-side code injection attack. In this particular attack, an attacker injects malicious data into vulnerable websites.

Attack happens when a user visits the web page, as malicious code is then executed. This attack is very harmful for web application users.

37. What are the different types of XSS attacks?

Ans:

There are three types of XSS attacks –

Non-Persistent XSS attack – Here the data injected by an attacker is reflected in the response and has a link with the XSS vector.

Persistent XSS attack – Most harmful type of attack, where the script executes automatically the moment a user opens the page.

Document Object Model (DOM)-based XSS attack – An advanced type of XSS attack which happens when a web application writes data to the DOM without any sanitization.

38. Why is information security policy important?

Ans:

Information security policy is important because it clearly outlines the responsibilities of employees about the safety and security of information, intellectual property, and data from potential risks.

39. What are the most popular work-around recovery options?

Ans:

The most popular work-around recovery options are 

• Fast recovery
• Gradual recovery
• Immediate recovery
• Intermediate recovery
• Manual workaround
• Reciprocal arrangements

40. What are the various service providers?

Ans:

Service providers that are a part of the ITIL process are,

Internal Service Provider (ISP) – ISPs are the dedicated resources of a business unit and deal with internal organization management.

External Service Provider (ESP) – ESPs offer IT services to external customers and is not limited to any business, individual, or market.

Shared Services Units (SSU) – SSUs are autonomous special units and act as an extension of ISPs.

41. What is ITIL?

Ans:

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of guidelines that helps Software professionals deliver the best IT services. These guidelines are best practices that are gathered, observed, and put together over time to provide quality IT services.

42. What is the difference between ITIL and COBIT?

Ans:

The difference between ITIL and COBIT is:

ITIL	COBIT
ITIL is used for Information Technology Service Management	COBIT is used for the integration of information and technology
It enables to implement guideline of business	It enables us to derive guidelines for business operations

It has features like:

1. 1. Service strategies
2. 2. Design, transitions
3. 3. Operation implementations
4. 4. It has features like:
5. 5. Control objectives
6. 6. Management guidelines
7. 7. Maturity models

43. Why ITIL is required?

Ans:

1. 1. Here, are reasons why ITIL is needed:
2. 2. Improve project delivery success.
3. 3. Manage constant business and IT change.
4. 4. Offer maximum value to customers.
5. 5. Enhance resources and capabilities.
6. 6. Provide services that are useful and reliable.
7. 7. Plan processes with specific goals in mind.
8. 8. Clearly defines roles for each task.
9. 9. Deliver value for customers through services
10. 10. Integrate business and service strategies.
11. 11. Improve the relationship with customers.
12. 12. Service management best practices.
13. 13. Better management of services and integration.
14. 14. Business services IT Functions.

44. Mention the objectives of Incident management?

Ans:

The objectives of the incident management process are:

• Incident management ensures that regulated methods are used for the efficient response, reporting of incidents, analysis, ongoing management, and documentation.
• Progress communication of incident management to IT staff.
• Align incident management activities and priorities properly.
• Manage the satisfaction of users with quality IT service.

45. What are the advantages of ITIL?

Ans:

The advantages of ITIL are:

1. 1. Increase customer satisfaction
2. 2. Helps to create a clear structure of an organization
3. 3. Improve service availability
4. 4. Financial management
5. 5. Allows to improve the decision-making process
6. 6. Helps to control infrastructure services

46. What’s the Difference Between ITIL® V3 and ITIL® 4?

Ans:

1. 1. ITIL 4 maintains many of the core elements available in previous versions.
2. 2. The latest changes from ITIL V3 to ITIL 4 help to optimize IT service management in a world that is moving from a CapEx model to OpEx one. 
3. 3. It gives businesses the ability to be more flexible, enabling them to adapt to rapidly changing technology while aligning with—and even driving—business requirements and goals.
4. 4. More specifically, it works with Agile, DevOps and AI.

47. What the important features of ITIL?

Ans:

The important features of ITIL are:

• One language/terminology.
• Related process and tasks (roles).
• Focus on IT. However, it is just not only suitable for IT.
• ITIL is a means to deliver consistent quality.
• Existing activities and how to optimize them.

48. Explain event management in ITIL

Ans:

Event management is used to ensure configuration items and services are continually observed. It can also be used to filter and categorize events to know specific actions.

49. Mention the basic difference between change requests and a service request?

Ans:

A change request is a proposal to make changes in a particular system or product. While a service request is submitted by the user and is a request for IT service access and changing of standard.

50. What is the ITIL Service Lifecycle Model?

Ans:

The processes are:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement

51. What is the primary difference between a process and a project?

Ans:

The primary difference between process and project is that a project has a finite lifespan while a process is continuous and having no deadline.

52. List the different Knowledge Management Systems ?

Ans:

Different Knowledge Management Systems are:

1. 1. DML (Definitive Media Library)
2. 2. CMDB (Configuration Management Database)
3. 3. CMIS (Capacity Management Information System)
4. 4. AMIS (Availability Management Information System)
5. 5. KEDB (Known Error Database)
6. 6. SKMS (Service Knowledge Management System)

53. Mention the goals of problem management in ITIL

Ans:

The goals of problem management in ITIL is to:

• Identify recurring incidents.
• Recognize the main cause of these occurrences.
• Prevent incidents from reoccurring.

54. Explain the responsibilities of Service Desk

Ans:

Responsibilities of an ITIL Service Desk are:

1. 1. To log, categorize, and prioritize the incidents.
2. 2. Resolve the incident.
3. 3. To examine the incidents.
4. 4. Make the Incident management report.

55. Differentiate between customers and end-users

Ans:

A customer is an entity having the capability to choose a product from the suppliers while the end-user is a direct recipient of service or product.

56. Differentiate between service request and incident

Ans:

A service request is a request which is processed by a user. The incident is an unplanned reduction in the quality of an IT service.

57. What is a CAB?

Ans:

CAB (Change Advisory Board) is a group of people who are involved in the change management process. They are mainly deal with authorization, prioritization, assessment, and scheduling of the changes.

58. Define Freeze period in ITIL

Ans:

The freeze period in ITIL is a particular time period in the development, after which severity and strictness and are observed. It requires rules for making changes to the source code.

59. List the workaround recovery options.

Ans:

Recovery options are commonly classified as:

• Manual workaround
• Reciprocal arrangements
• Gradual recovery
• Intermediate recovery
• Fast recovery
• Immediate recovery

60. Explain the 4 P’s needed for the Service Management in ITIL

Ans:

4 P’s needed for the Service Management in ITIL are:

People: People in the IT field perform processes which are associated with ITIL Service Management.

Processes: It includes an examination of the company’s ability to implement the required processes.

Products: products are referred to as tools used by IT staff to implement the processes of ITIL.

Partners: Each and every in-house or outsourced and IT organization, has partners that enable service to work properly.

61. What is the RACI model?

Ans:

RACI defines as:

Responsible: Responsibilities which are assigned to a person in order to complete a particular task.

Accountable: The person is accountable for the specific task.

Consulted: Groups or people consulted for the task.

Informed: People who are kept informed about the current process of the task.

62. Explain CSI in ITIL

Ans:

CSI or Continues Service Improvement is the final stage in the Lifecycle of ITIL. During this stage, services within the IT service provider are reviewed to identify the areas for improvement.

63. What are the important ITIL stages?

Ans:

Stages of ITIL

Service Strategy: Service Strategy Operations ensure that services such as fulfilling user requests, working on service failures, fixing problems, and carrying out routine operational tasks efficiently and effectively.

Service Design: This stage ensures agreed service is delivered when, where, and at the defined cost.

Service Transitions: The goal of the Service Transition process is to build and deploy IT services. It also makes sure that changes to services and Service Management processes are conducted in a coordinated way.

Service Operations: This ITIL stage focuses on meeting end-users’ expectations while balancing costs and discovering any potential problems.

Continual Service Improvement: It makes sure that IT services can recover and continue from a service incident. It helps to conduct business simper analysis to prioritize business recovery.

64. What is the main difference between an incident and a problem?

Ans:

An incident can be defined as an event that leads to disruptions in IT service, and a problem is the underlying reason of these incidents.

65. Define Post Implementation Review (PIR)

Ans:

Post Implementation Review is the evaluation and examination of the working process as well as a solution. It is generally performed after the change request is put into effect to ensure that the implemented changes were successful or not.

66. What is the Operational Level Agreement?

Ans:

Operational Level Agreement or OLA is a contract. It emphasizes the various IT groups in a company and how they design services to support SLA.

67. Define configuration baseline

Ans:

The configuration baseline in ITIL is a baseline that is used for a configuration purpose. It is managed by the change management process.

68. Mention layers of service management measurements.

Ans:

Layers of service management measurements are:

Progress: It responsible for handling the progress of the existing service operations.

Compliance: It is mainly concern with the compliance of market standards and the trending industry process.

Effectiveness: This measurement helps to maintain the effectiveness of the services.

Efficiency: It helps with the efficiency of workflow and service maintenance.

69. Why Service Transition is used?

Ans:

Service Transition is used to:

Make sure that a particular service can be managed, operated as well as supported. Give quality knowledge of Change, Release, and Deployment. Plan and manage the resource and capacity and requirements to accomplish a release.

70. Mention 7 steps involved in continual service improvement

Ans:

Seven steps involved in continual service improvement are:

1. 1. Find the approach for improvement
2. 2. know what should be measured
3. 3. Collect the necessary data
4. 4. Data processing
5. 5. Analyze both information and data
6. 6. Proper utilization of information
7. 7. Implement the needed improvements

71. Mention the applications of ITIL

Ans:

The important areas where ITIL plays an effective are:

• IT and strategic business planning
• Implementing continuous improvement
• Obtaining and retaining the right resources and skillsets
• Reducing total cost and overall cost of ownership
• Demonstrating the business value to IT
• Helps you to measure IT organization effectiveness and efficiency

72. List some popular web-based service desk tools

Ans:

Popular web-based service desk tools are:

1. 1. CA service desk
2. 2. Bugzilla
3. 3. Oracle Service Cloud
4. 4. SolarWinds Web Help Desk
5. 5. ServiceNow
6. 6. BMC
7. 7. Spiceworks Help Desk/Cloud Help Desk
8. 8. Tivoli
9. 9. C-Desk
10. 10. OTRS Free

73. Explain Return on Investment

Ans:

ROI is an investment of resources taking advantage to the investor. It can be calculated as Return on investment (%) = Net profit / Investment x 100.

74. Define change management

Ans:

Change management is a group of people who find and approve changes to the software.

It enables to review the important changes that will take place in the future. Modifications needs and approval by ensuring they do not have any negative impact on the system.

75. Define the concept of IT policy

Ans:

An IT policy is the management of communication and storage work. For example, One IT policy can be referred to as email attachment size.

76. Define Service Reporting

Ans:

Service Reporting is the process of producing and delivering reports of trends and achievements against Service Levels.

77. Explain the term Service Assets and Configuration Management

Ans:

Service Assets and Configuration Management (SACM) mainly deals with maintaining and verifying assets database, which are also made available to other processes.

78. Differentiate between service and product

Ans:

The difference between service and product is:

Service	Product
Services are both produced as well as consumed at the same time	Products cannot be produced or consumed at the same time
Services are inconsistent	Products are consistent
The user can participate in the production of services	The user cannot participate in product production

79. Mention processes involve in Service Design

Ans:

Processes involved in service design are:

1. 1. Design coordination
2. 2. Service level management
3. 3. Service catalogue management
4. 4. Availability management
5. 5. Capacity management
6. 6. Information security management
7. 7. IT Service continuity management
8. 8. Supplier management

80. What is the responsibility of the process owner?

Ans:

The process owner is responsible for the design, performance, integration, improvement, and management of a particular process.

81. Explain five qualities of information assets in IT security management?

Ans:

Five qualities of information assets in IT security management are:

Confidentiality: It ensures that the asset is available only to a particular party.

Integrity: It ensures that an unauthorized party has not changed asset

Availability: It makes sure that the asset may be utilized when needed

Authenticity: Ensures that the identities of the party is genuine.

Nonrepudiation: It ensures that transactions, once completed, must not be reversed without approval.

82. What is the significant difference between ITIL v2 and ITIL v3?

Ans:

The significant difference between ITIL v2. Vs. ITIL v3 is:

ITIL v2	ITIL v3
It focuses on the product, process, and people	It focuses on a product, process, people, and partners
The version provides a process-oriented approach	The version provides Lifecycle based approach
In v2 of ITIL, security management is part of the evaluation	In v3, security management is a completely separate process
Focuses on service design and strategy	Equal attention to all processes
Have 10 processes and 2 functions	Have 26 processes and 4 functions

83. Define SLR

Ans:

Service Level Requirements or SLR is a document having the requirements for a service from the client viewpoint to define a target.

84. What is capacity management?

Ans:

Capacity Management is focused on ensuring that at all times, the cost-effective capacity exists that meets the business demands mention in SLA.

85. What is IT Service Continuity Management?

Ans:

ITSCM process ensures that the service provider provides the minimum agreed-upon levels of service. It uses techniques like Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and Management of Risk (MOR).

86. Why evaluation process is important?

Ans:

The evaluation process is important because it assists you in assessing significant changes, like the introduction of a new service to an existing service.

87. What is the difference between Utility and Warranty?

Ans:

Utility	Warranty
The utility is defined as functionality offered by service or product from the customer perspective	Warranty is defined as a promise that service or product will agree with the need
The utility deals with is what the client gets	Warranty deals with how service is delivered
The utility should meet the customer requirement, that is, it should fit for the intention	Warranty should operate the service properly
Utility can increases the performance average	Equal attention to all processes
Have 10 processes and 2 functions	Warranty can reduce performance variation

88. What is alert in event management process management?

Ans:

An alert indicates that a failure has occurred. Alerts are created and managed by system management tools. The event management process manages the alerts.

89. Explain various types of services

Ans:

Different types of services are:

Core Service: Core service provides the basic results needed by the customers and like to invest.

Enabling Service: Enabling service is needed to deliver core IT service. It serves the basic factors that enable the client to receive the core service. This service might not be seen by the clients.

Enhancing Service: Enhancing services deals with those services which are added to core service to make more appealing to the clients. This service encourages customers to use core services frequently.

90. What are the resources?

Ans:

Resources can be defined as a tangible assets of an organization. They can be purchased in order to deliver service. Resources include the people, applications, and IT infrastructure.

91. What are the capabilities?

Ans:

Capabilities defined as an ability for coordinating, controlling, and deploying resources to create services. They can be driven by experience and are depending on the information.

92. Let’s Start off Extremely Simple. Explain What Itil is?

Ans:

ITIL is short for Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

It is a set of core volumes that detail a framework of best practices for IT service management, with the emphasis on aligning IT services with the needs of any given business.  It’s a systematic approach to high-quality IT service delivery, providing a common language that includes clear, specific terms.